Archive for the ‘IXOYE’ Category
Faith hacking
Monday, March 31st, 2008I recently set up a new blog/site to share and collect ideas for increasing the effectiveness of our walk as Christians called FaithHack. Based on the cool sites like Life Hacker, FaithHack will, hopefully become a repository of helpful hits and tips for increasing our faith and living and authentic Christian life that extends beyond the church doors and into our work places, recreations and community relationships.
Fifteen Blogs in Fifteen Days (sort of…)
Thursday, January 17th, 2008Monday I finished the 15th blog entry in our ReadingThru project, covering the first 11 chapters in Genesis and finishing off the 42 chapters of Book of Job. My pastor is taking the next week and has done a great job with his first couple of entries here and here. At first I thought it would be nice to get a break from the writing and just get to read, but after a couple of days I miss it - to the point where I have seriously considered adding a couple of entries here to cover the next chunk of Genesis.
When I first thought of ReadingThru, I thought it was a novel idea, but nothing is new under the sun (or at least withing Google’s reach) and I found the excellent One Year Bible blog, http://www.oneyearbibleblog.com/, which has archive entries from as far back as Sept. 2004! Their entry for the 17th is full of images and a YouTube video - very cool.
The downside 15 blog entries in fifteen days is WaggleDance has been neglected (a bit). Elim has started to see an influx of geeks, so I hope to post some reviews of open source software useful for Christians and Churches.
Churchianity vs. Christianity
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007I just ran across a term I had never heard before: Churchianity. In a nutshell, churchianity is the result of taking Christ out of Christianity. Jesus commanded us, the Church, to “go and make disciples”, but the unfortunate reality is that we are more prone to go and make church members. When I say “we”, I, of course mean the “royal We“, also known as “me, myself, and I”. While I have heard my Master’s instructions to make disciples and to preach the Good News, I have to ask myself:
- Who am I discipling, right now?
If I look back at someone I have mentored or raised in the faith, or look forward planning to reach out to a new believer, I am either resting on my laurels or exchanging planning for doing. While I could say that I am waiting on God to direct me to someone or have Him direct someone to me (I would sound soooo very spiritual, too), but the truth is that there are 6.6 billion people on the planet. What are the odds God is having troubles finding someone?? No, the bigger likelihood is that God is waiting for me to really say “..not my will, but yours be done.” - Who is discipling me?
If Jesus’s plan to spread the faith was for the apostles to go and make disciples, who go and make disciple, who, in turn, go and make disciples, it seems pretty clear that if I am to be part of the plan, I need to be part of that chain.
I can’t claim that I am wholly instructed by my Bible studies, or else part of His instructions would have been, “go and hurl big leather bound books at the nations and hope they get it.”
I can’t claim that I am being discipled by the radio and TV preachers and teachers, or else he would have instructed us to air-drop TV’s tuned to TBN over the unsaved nations.
I can’t claim that I have arrived, that I am done being discipled, because, wacky doctrines of sanctification aside, I can’t find any place in the scriptures that describes a point where I would know all there is know about God and His plans for the world and for me. There is ALWAYS someone I can learn from, someone with a perspective or insight on the Father I can profit from. - What is the Good News?
I know the gospel message, really I do, but if I expend the opportunities the Spirit provides me sharing the virtues of my church, the schedule and coming events, what is the Good News? That my church is a nice place with nice people and nice programs? If the “good news” brings someone to a service, at best the Spirit is faithful and they hear the real Good News, but, at worst, I’ve squandered the chance God has given me to share Christ and witness a true miracle - a life transformed.
ReadingThru has a home! - Blogging through the Bible in One Year
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007I’ve set up a Wordpress instance off of my church’s domain to host the ReadingThru project. I’ve looked at a number of “One Year Bible” blogs, and I hope this one is a little different in that it’s more about the thoughts and impressions of the moment than a detailed study of the text.
My Church at MyChurch
Monday, November 19th, 2007I have been checking out MyChurch and the nice set of community tools they have. They have kind of a Facebook vibe; it will be interesting to see how they evolve. It didn’t take long to get to be largest virtual community in our area (Augusta, Me.) but I’m not sure if that speaks more to the level of acceptance of these types of systems here in the remote north-east, than the overall popularity of MyChurch. The idea of virtual communities extending real communities is a pretty interesting one, but I wonder how it will playout with smaller churches and ministries that can’t muster the kind of global scale you find in Facebook or MySpace.